Improving Survivability of Aircraft from Uncontained Gas Turbine Engine Failures
This article describes new measures to improve survivability of aircraft from uncontained gas turbine engine failures. The US military has adopted a common tool—Uncontained Engine Debris Damage Assessment Model (UEDDAM)—for its methodology to consider uncontained events in a more realistic manner. UEDDAM can handle the analysis for the release of the primary rotor-disk segment plus smaller engine debris fragments in directions out of the plane of rotation. The UEDDAM code requires an input of a three-dimensional geometric description of aircraft component positions within the aircraft and thus, in relationship to each other. The description uses a specific input format. Adopting an assessment methodology, like UEDDAM, results in a universal standard and uniformity of debris hazard evaluation across the involved agencies. Maintaining the 3D aircraft geometry model and its components/system functional flow data generated by aircraft manufacturers during their initial hazard assessment would simplify later debris hazard reassessments required by maintenance, repair, or military-modification to a commercial aircraft.